OVP: Best Film Editing (2022)
The Nominees Were...
Mikkel EG Nielsen, The Banshees of Inisherin
Matt Villa & Jonathan Redmond, Elvis
Paul Rogers, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Monika Willi, Tar
Eddie Hamilton, Top Gun: Maverick
My Thoughts: Editing is one of the Academy categories I struggle with discussing on here, because it's largely known as the "invisible science." Knowing the truly best editing is a challenge, because you don't know which wretch of a picture was actually a terrific salvage job all-things-considered (looking at you, Don't Worry Darling). This is true for 2022 in particular because there's a lot of movies that I wanted to include in the Best Editing race for my own ballot. I'm not sure if any of these ultimately get in with me, but three stand out as exceptionally strong & maybe I should rethink my lineup.
The first is Top Gun: Maverick. My trepidation with this film is that it handles almost all of the non-effects scenes (save for the ones with Val Kilmer) really poorly. The dialogue & scripting are so schmaltzy, and read like we're watching an army recruitment video in the way they are pieced together. But the flight sequences are so ingenious. They feel like we're actually in the air (which in many cases, we are), but also that they are melding the CGI and the real so well, and every single aerial battle feels unique & well-constructed. This is due to a crack team of editors piecing together admittedly strong work from the VFX branch. If the WGA strike hasn't taught you anything, it should've taught you that film is a collaborative art, and this is very much the case for Top Gun.
The other film that stands apart is Tar. The movie unfolds like a metronome, and I love the way that it uses long-shots (like with the scene where Lydia is arguing with a student, and both of them are making poor points to each other, even if Lydia ends up winning) to establish our titular character. The movie's final third sometimes feels like we're borrowing a bit too much from a movie like Laura (where it's not clear if we're in a dream sequence or not), and it's weird to give a film this long consideration for editing, but it's masterfully-constructed & gives us the best lecture on Lydia.
The Banshees of Inisherin is a comedy, and while it's oftentimes forgotten by major awards bodies, comedies require good timing (and thus, good editing). This is true here-the back-and-forth between the four main quartet, the pacing of each scene and the increasing escalation between Farrell & Gleeson's characters is breathtaking stuff, and the editors do a strong job of keeping some of the melancholy that informs the movie very on-the-surface, so that the late-film surprises feel shocking but not out-of-place. Unlike Tar or Top Gun, it doesn't show off much (we don't get a lot of technical wizardry), but we don't need that for this be well-edited.
Our final two films, I'm sorry, aren't in the same league, even though they both have the showiest editing touches. Elvis is told across decades, but the swooshing surrealism of the film takes out as often as it puts us back in, and while some sequences are played for the appropriate amount of comic effect (I have to assume the "he's white!" scene is meant to be hilariously greedy, and that's on the editing team more than anyone else), the way that the film unpacks in the final third feels too edited, too reliant on Elvis the Myth and not the Elvis we've seen for two hours.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is a movie we're going to discuss a lot (it dominated with Oscar), and since it's our first outing, I'll only say that I do, in fact, like the movie, but am not as enamored as most are so I'm going to probably come across as a hater even though I give it (and most of its technical aspects) a thumbs up. That's true for editing-it's fun, and the way that they play with the dual character of Stephanie Hsu's Joy/Jobu is well-handled. But it's trying too much, veering into incoherence, the further we get. The central message of family is always there, but it feels like it's too long & repetitive toward the end, trying to pad the inevitable.
Other Precursor Contenders: The ACE Eddie Awards separate their categories between Comedy/Musical and Drama, so we have ten nominations here. For Drama, the victor was Top Gun atop All Quiet on the Western Front, Elvis, Tar, and The Woman King, while Comedy/Musical favored Everything Everywhere All at Once atop Banshees, Glass Onion, Triangle of Sadness, & The Menu. The BAFTA's went with Everything Everywhere All at Once also, and kept the entire Oscar lineup verbatim. This lack of creativity makes me assume that the sixth place was probably a strong Best Picture nominee, so...The Fabelmans? It was in Pic/Director, so this couldn't be that far off.
Films I Would Have Nominated: I didn't realize until I said this the other day to a friend, but Avatar 2 is apparently a controversial choice here? For me, it seems only logical. The movie is generous not just in what we get in terms of feeding the action (the entire last hour is the best action film I've seen since the 1990's), but also in the way that it has the patience to give us establishing shots, welcoming us into this new portion of Pandora. It's gorgeous, and it's also essential to the long-term vision of James Cameron's movie that we have scenes that are just pretty, not necessarily about plot (film's a visual medium, that's okay). Totally earned, and should've been cited here like the original was.
Oscar's Choice: The EEAAO train was not stopping here, though one wonders if Top Gun at least got it to slow down a little bit.
My Choice: I could see the merits of all three winning, but I'm going to give the trophy to Tar against Top Gun (silver) and Banshees (bronze). I'm doing it because it has the most consistency, and uses the editing the best (this is, after all, not the Best Picture category but the Best Editing category, so tricks are worth giving some bonus points). EEAAO and then Elvis follow.
Those are my thoughts-what are yours? Do you prefer the mutiverse layering of EEAAO or the decrescendo throughout Tar? What makes the Academy randomly pick some comedies but ignore most others? And why do you think Oscar skipped Avatar here when they went for the original? Share your thoughts below!
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